Good Television in the Decade of Zeroes

I've been thinking about this a lot lately... Is it just me or has Television really moved closer to excellence in the past couple years? Since The Sopranos debuted over a decade ago, producers have really upped the ante on what Television can do. And it's bled from less edgy channels like HBO to some (I use that word VERY lightly) broadcast networks. We've seen some of the best television ever made! The Wire, Mad Men, Arrested Development, Lost, The West Wing, Family Guy, 24, Veronica Mars, Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, Modern Family, Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, House, Breaking Bad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Glee (though I personally have a love/hate relationship with that show), Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (A little older, but we're still feeling it's impact),  30 Rock, (I could go on and on) enter the fray to change what we expect out of Television shows.  The Wire and Mad Men will probably go down as the Citizen Kane and Casablanca of Television. In the Decade of Zeroes, I think people will remember what came from the Tube than what came from the Silver Screen.


Now, thinking back, my 20-year-old self would probably be shocked that I would even be writing this today. But, it's amazing how impactful Television really has become. And here's the thing about TV... it's about the Characters. If you hear people talk about shows, even if they're intrigued by some water cooler plot point, the whole reason is their love for the characters. Film used to do this. The most beloved films of all time are about people's love for the characters. But since the '90s, Hollywood has been obsessed with PLOT DRIVEN FILMS, specifically ACTION MOVIES with COOL VISUAL EFFECTS sans Character Development. Television, on the other-hand pulls you in because of the characters. There are shows that are plot driven and they are fantastic. But even Lost was more intriguing because we cared about the plight and internal conflicts of Jack, Kate, Locke, Sawyer, et al, not it's zaney plane-crashing-time-traveling-gilligan's-island-on-crack-polar-bears-in-the-pacific-four-toed-statue-smoke-monster plot twists.

Three shows blew my mind this summer, meaning I marathoned them via Netflix, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Friday Night Lights (which I went into great detail a couple weeks ago).  

The Wire showed me how you can make a gritty-real show that feels like a documentary and puts you in a world unto itself. A world where you feel like you yourself are a citizen of inner city Baltimore. You know these characters (FNL is the same way, but again, a whole post unto itself). When you start in The Wire Season 1 you're not really clear on what's going on, because it's as if the camera has just been dropped into the middle of the action that's been going on for a very long time. By the time you get through the series, you've seen so many different facets of this city at play and how crime has crippled it, that you think of it as a home you care about. The whole city. You're not obsessed with one (usually the lead) character. You're obsessed with the hundreds that David Simon & Co. have introduced you to. And unflinchingly, the creators didn't sympathize any of these characters. Just because a character was a fan favorite, didn't mean he was safe from having a bullet put in his head. The words "Shakespearean" or "Homeric" are thrown around a lot in refrence to this show, and they're not wrong in saying so. It's an Epic to it's truest form of the word.

Breaking Bad is a little more plot based, but the plots are interesting, only because of how amazing and unique each of the characters are. There's a reason Bryan Cranston has won 3 Best Actor Emmys in a row for this show. His character, Walter White, might be the most complicated character on television, and that's saying something in a TV landscape that already has Don Draper and Patty Hewes. You add Walter to the mix of all the other highly-flawed-but-complex characters of the Meth World of Albuquerque, and the drama spews forth, making a wonderful concoction. Are you supposed to route for Walter, or hate him? He is a brilliant Chemist and teacher who moonlights as the maker of the cities best quality of meth. Walter has cancer and poor health insurance and sees selling as the only way to pay for his treatment. At first. But then he starts to love the allure of being "Bad". And you don't want to side with him because he is ruining the perfectly adequate lives of the family members that go out of their way to try to love and support him. This is a man that does not deserve that. At all. He seems to lack the moral backbone to gauge that the product he makes is a killer and destroyer of lives on so many levels. But we do side with him all the same. Like I said complex.

That complexity is something that was rarely seen in television before The Sopranos came along (I feel a separate post is due for this show so I won't elaborate right now). The richness of setting and character make the drama all the more compelling. Instead of getting a mere two hours to spend in these worlds, we get (in the best cases) several seasons. They don't always measure up (Lost Season 3 anyone? Or The West Wing post-Aaron Sorkin), but we still come back again and again, because we feel at home or are intrigued by what could possible happen next.